Blind or visually impaired (B/VI) persons have trouble reading medicine bottle labels at the risk that they take the wrong medicine or the wrong dosage of the right medicine. A growing US population will suffer vision impairment from diabetes. Another large population will suffer vision impairment from injury. Finally, a large and aging baby boomer population is expected to suffer vision impairment by way of a progressive disease called macular degeneration. But the problem is not only with B/VI persons. The same inability to read medicine bottle labels exists for persons who do not read the language in which the prescription on the label is printed. It is estimated that a growing US population of thirty million people cannot read English, and it is estimated that 41% of the US population cannot read third-grade English and thus are functionally illiterate. Safety thus is a great concern for such persons.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that reasonable accommodations be made for persons with disabilities such as B/VI. It is impractical to accommodate such B/VI persons by printing the medicine bottle label in Braille for two reasons: 1) The prescription printed in Braille would not fit in the space provided on a conventional medicine bottle label, and 2) only approximately 10% of the B/VI population in the United States can read Braille. Clearly, other accommodations are needed to avoid or minimize the risk of injury or death to a person who cannot read a medicine bottle label's prescription.
Talking medicine bottles recently has been proposed by RxMed, Inc. as a solution to a niche, glucose-monitoring medication labeling problem. But the proposed solution is impractical in that few if any pharmacies are willing to stock large inventories of different empty medicine bottles, one inventory for the sighted and one inventory for the B/VI or reading-challenged. Moreover, the proposed solution is bulky and expensive, as it requires a special auxiliary reader base to be purchased and placed in the home of each user, and to be programmed the bottle must be programmed in the user's home by a trusted, sighted, and literate in-home companion or partner. Thus, even aside from nearly prohibitive cost, the proposed solution is cumbersome and the user's safety and independence are compromised.
Talking greeting cards and books are available that utilize a recordable voice module (into which a person speaks) that, when played back, audibly repeats the recorded greeting and/or text.
On Jul. 9, 2012, President Barack Obama signed into law the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act requiring US pharmacies to provide prescription medicines with important information on their prescription labels that specifically accommodate B/VI customers. This recent legislation underscores the ADA's already existing “reasonable accommodations” mandate.